A revelation about 1 Cor 13:
In God's world, love isn't the excuse. It's the reason, the main point. Love isn't the precondition to everything; it is everything.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Quotables
I just watched Get Smart yesterday. Love that movie. It's funny, witty and the humour isn't just slapstick. There's actually some substance to the plot and the characterization.
A really good line from the movie prompted me to make a post on a few quotes that stuck in my mind lately:
"That's what they do, not who they are."
- when Maxwell Smart is talking about the bad guys being, well, bad guys
Couple more...
"If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."
- Irv Blitzer, the Bobsled coach in Cool Runnings, on why he cheated to get a third Olympic gold medal and risked losing the two he already had.
And last of all, to end on a completely different note, a quote from Patrick, one of my fellow counselors at the EPGY camp held at NTU in Singapore over the last 3 weeks, whose first response upon hearing the live firing from the army camp nearby was, in a calm and collected manner as he stared as his Uno cards:
"Is China attacking??"
A really good line from the movie prompted me to make a post on a few quotes that stuck in my mind lately:
"That's what they do, not who they are."
- when Maxwell Smart is talking about the bad guys being, well, bad guys
Couple more...
"If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."
- Irv Blitzer, the Bobsled coach in Cool Runnings, on why he cheated to get a third Olympic gold medal and risked losing the two he already had.
And last of all, to end on a completely different note, a quote from Patrick, one of my fellow counselors at the EPGY camp held at NTU in Singapore over the last 3 weeks, whose first response upon hearing the live firing from the army camp nearby was, in a calm and collected manner as he stared as his Uno cards:
"Is China attacking??"
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Weird psychology
For some reason or other, whenever I'm awake when others are awake, I have this subconscious urge to do stuff, to be productive, or at the very least active, even when I want to take time to myself, so that even if I decide to sit back and watch some TV or something like that, I still feel crappy for not doing much. But once everyone else is asleep, I finally feel like it's my own time. For some reason the night's more peaceful - when others are up, alone time is dreary, but when no one else is up, alone time is solitude. The fewer people there are awake, the less bustling the environment is. It seems completely understandable and normal to me, and at the same time it seems so fundamentally flawed. It doesn't make any sense that the night time should be the only time when I feel like I can be still. God made the entire day for me, why should only the night be mine?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Mendicants Spring Show 2008
Check out the trailer to my a cappella group's Spring Show happening next week...
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Where did all that time go?
It's finals week this week. Where did my whole quarter go? Was Pi day (March 14, a.k.a. 3.14 in American notation) really an entire year ago, when John Sillcox demonstrated his Mathematical prowess by reciting Pi to a HUNDRED decimal places unprepared in front of a captive Chi Alpha audience? Has it really been more than an entire month since my last blog post? Am I really 2/3 way through my SECOND (!!) year of college?
Geez. This is nuts. This quarter didn't feel like a quarter at all. Didn't really enjoy my classes, don't feel like the quarter peaked, don't feel like it's ending. Guess it hasn't been a great quarter. Like most things, it's had its good sides, but that doesn't mean it was good.
Took Indonesian this quarter, I can form decent sentences now and understand basic written stuff; still can't understand spoken Indonesian very well just 'cos Indonesians speak really fast and with a pretty thick accent. But I've made a good amount of progress that I'm happy with. Yesterday we had to take a 45-minute final (which wasn't really critical 'cos I'm only taking the class for pass/fail, not for a letter grade) and then give a short 10-minute presentation on anything we wanted. Took some photos with my computer's webcam. Photos are always a nice addition to the blog. Unless you're Gong Gong who prints out my blog pages without the photos to read. Sorry Gong Gong, but you can still come online to see the pictures!
Guru kami (our teacher), Anita:
Charmaine, setting up her presentation on her past and upcoming service trips to Sekayu, a village in Indonesia. Charmaine's also a Sophomore (i.e. 2nd year) from Singapore.
Anita, manning the video camera. She wanted to record all of our presentations for her own keepsake. Clearly Charmaine had just said something really bad by mistake...
I'm just kidding Charmaine saying something bad. Her presentation went great.
Charmaine presenting. "Musim panas tahun lalu" = (lit.) season hot year last = last summer:
Alejandro, presenting on his family:
Alejandro again:
Tidak ada foto lagi (that's all the photos I have).
If I've anticipated your thoughts well, here are my responses:
1. Yup, no pictures of me, 'cos I was the one taking the photos, using my own computer. Besides the fact that I can't click the camera button while doing a presentation (let alone in Indonesian!), I was also using my laptop for the presentation so obviously I couldn't use it to take pictures at the same time. In case you're curious, my presentation was entitled "Kenapa Saya Mau Belajar Bahasa Indonesia" which means "Why I want(ed) to study Indonesian".
2. Yes, that's all the students in the class (besides me). There're only 3 of us, not including the teacher. Actually there were 4, but one of them, Shannon, is a Anthropology Ph.D student who flew off midway through the quarter to Indonesia for intensive Bahasa Indonesia courses and on-site field work. Intense stuff. Wonder how she's doing there.
My last final's coming up this Thursday, and then I fly off until March 31st to tour the East Coast with the Mendicants. I wonder if I'll have the time/motivation to update the blog with photos during the trip. We'll be flying to D.C. (yay), then going to New York City, then East Hampton (I think that's on Long Island, which is also in New York state), then Boston (yay again). And apparently we're doing all of it without renting a single car. This should be interesting. :P
Geez. This is nuts. This quarter didn't feel like a quarter at all. Didn't really enjoy my classes, don't feel like the quarter peaked, don't feel like it's ending. Guess it hasn't been a great quarter. Like most things, it's had its good sides, but that doesn't mean it was good.
Took Indonesian this quarter, I can form decent sentences now and understand basic written stuff; still can't understand spoken Indonesian very well just 'cos Indonesians speak really fast and with a pretty thick accent. But I've made a good amount of progress that I'm happy with. Yesterday we had to take a 45-minute final (which wasn't really critical 'cos I'm only taking the class for pass/fail, not for a letter grade) and then give a short 10-minute presentation on anything we wanted. Took some photos with my computer's webcam. Photos are always a nice addition to the blog. Unless you're Gong Gong who prints out my blog pages without the photos to read. Sorry Gong Gong, but you can still come online to see the pictures!
Guru kami (our teacher), Anita:
Charmaine, setting up her presentation on her past and upcoming service trips to Sekayu, a village in Indonesia. Charmaine's also a Sophomore (i.e. 2nd year) from Singapore.
Anita, manning the video camera. She wanted to record all of our presentations for her own keepsake. Clearly Charmaine had just said something really bad by mistake...
I'm just kidding Charmaine saying something bad. Her presentation went great.
Charmaine presenting. "Musim panas tahun lalu" = (lit.) season hot year last = last summer:
Alejandro, presenting on his family:
Alejandro again:
Tidak ada foto lagi (that's all the photos I have).
If I've anticipated your thoughts well, here are my responses:
1. Yup, no pictures of me, 'cos I was the one taking the photos, using my own computer. Besides the fact that I can't click the camera button while doing a presentation (let alone in Indonesian!), I was also using my laptop for the presentation so obviously I couldn't use it to take pictures at the same time. In case you're curious, my presentation was entitled "Kenapa Saya Mau Belajar Bahasa Indonesia" which means "Why I want(ed) to study Indonesian".
2. Yes, that's all the students in the class (besides me). There're only 3 of us, not including the teacher. Actually there were 4, but one of them, Shannon, is a Anthropology Ph.D student who flew off midway through the quarter to Indonesia for intensive Bahasa Indonesia courses and on-site field work. Intense stuff. Wonder how she's doing there.
My last final's coming up this Thursday, and then I fly off until March 31st to tour the East Coast with the Mendicants. I wonder if I'll have the time/motivation to update the blog with photos during the trip. We'll be flying to D.C. (yay), then going to New York City, then East Hampton (I think that's on Long Island, which is also in New York state), then Boston (yay again). And apparently we're doing all of it without renting a single car. This should be interesting. :P
Monday, February 11, 2008
Patrick Kozey and the Mendicants sing for SABA!
SABA = Singaporean-American Business Association. We sang for their gala dinner about 3 months ago in San Francisco. Here's the smooth voice of Patrick Kozey of the Mendicants singing Hooked On A Feeling. The video's a bit jerky, sorry about that.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Durian!
Yes, believe it or not. They've apparently found a way to grow durian trees here in California.
I'm kidding of course. They freeze durian and import it to the Chinese supermarket here. I was at the supermarket (Ranch 99) the other day and saw durian in boxes. It was two pieces for 5 bucks which i thought was quite ex but decided to try anyway. Turns out they're seedless! Or at least someone took out the seeds. So it's a pretty decent amount of durian flesh for 5 bucks! Unfortunately I think I left the durian in my fridge for a bit too long so one of the pieces was a bit sour. Don't worry, I didn't eat it. The other piece was pretty good - nice and smooth and creamy and, of course, tasty. More on the sweet side, only slightly (but not really) bitter. Yummmmm. :)
Talking about food.... two weekends ago (the weekend before Tahoe) I went to SoCal (Southern California, i.e. the LA area and San Diego) with the Mendicants and Counterpoint, this all girls group that is pretty good friends with our group. We went to this ex-mendicant's house in Hollywood - he sound engineers for TV shows for a living and he's actually won an emmy for sound engineering on Ally McBeal and was nominated for his work on the X-Files! Pro... Anyway check out this HUGE pizza that he (his name is Kurt) ordered for us:
It was like 3 feet in diameter. Which is about... I don't know... 120cm?
Oh and I mentioned the Emmy... Here's a picture of one the Mendicants, Jai, and the Emmy in the background. We'd only just gotten to Kurt's and didn't dare to go touch it yet, so the Emmy is actually on a shelf in a corner of the room, and Jai is holding up his hand to just the right height so that it looks like he's holding a tiny Emmy. He's actually quite far in front of it:
Here're a couple of pictures from San Diego, which we went to on one of the days of our tour in SoCal. More specifically, Coronado, a small, very pleasant and pretty rich island just off the coast from San Diego:
That's my shadow. hehehe. Look at how nice the sand on the beach looks.
A picturesque view of my car set against the rising moon.... *violin music in the background*
I know I've been less regular with updates this year... last year everything was new and exciting. This year I'm finding rather different things important compared to last year, not all of which I'm inclined to say to myself "I wanna blog about it!". I'll still post updates when I can though. Like this one. =)
I'm kidding of course. They freeze durian and import it to the Chinese supermarket here. I was at the supermarket (Ranch 99) the other day and saw durian in boxes. It was two pieces for 5 bucks which i thought was quite ex but decided to try anyway. Turns out they're seedless! Or at least someone took out the seeds. So it's a pretty decent amount of durian flesh for 5 bucks! Unfortunately I think I left the durian in my fridge for a bit too long so one of the pieces was a bit sour. Don't worry, I didn't eat it. The other piece was pretty good - nice and smooth and creamy and, of course, tasty. More on the sweet side, only slightly (but not really) bitter. Yummmmm. :)
Talking about food.... two weekends ago (the weekend before Tahoe) I went to SoCal (Southern California, i.e. the LA area and San Diego) with the Mendicants and Counterpoint, this all girls group that is pretty good friends with our group. We went to this ex-mendicant's house in Hollywood - he sound engineers for TV shows for a living and he's actually won an emmy for sound engineering on Ally McBeal and was nominated for his work on the X-Files! Pro... Anyway check out this HUGE pizza that he (his name is Kurt) ordered for us:
It was like 3 feet in diameter. Which is about... I don't know... 120cm?
Oh and I mentioned the Emmy... Here's a picture of one the Mendicants, Jai, and the Emmy in the background. We'd only just gotten to Kurt's and didn't dare to go touch it yet, so the Emmy is actually on a shelf in a corner of the room, and Jai is holding up his hand to just the right height so that it looks like he's holding a tiny Emmy. He's actually quite far in front of it:
Here're a couple of pictures from San Diego, which we went to on one of the days of our tour in SoCal. More specifically, Coronado, a small, very pleasant and pretty rich island just off the coast from San Diego:
That's my shadow. hehehe. Look at how nice the sand on the beach looks.
A picturesque view of my car set against the rising moon.... *violin music in the background*
I know I've been less regular with updates this year... last year everything was new and exciting. This year I'm finding rather different things important compared to last year, not all of which I'm inclined to say to myself "I wanna blog about it!". I'll still post updates when I can though. Like this one. =)
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